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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24236743">Unconditional</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/64K/pseuds/64K'>64K</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Justice or Mercy (Clive gen oneshots) [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Layton Kyouju Series | Professor Layton Series</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Childhood Memories, Gen, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Post-Unwound Future, Regret</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-05-17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-05-17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-02 19:34:54</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>882</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24236743</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/64K/pseuds/64K</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>It's been far too long since Clive last visited Constance's grave.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Clive &amp; Constance Dove</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Justice or Mercy (Clive gen oneshots) [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1749358</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>8</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>16</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Unconditional</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"It's been too long, Constance."</p><p>Clive lowers a knee, kneeling in front of the tombstone. The cold damp earth leaves mud and grass stains on his trousers, water soaking through the fabric. It's worth it, though, just to be near Constance, after being separated from her for so long by his own idiocy.</p><p>"It's been eight years, by my count. Since you… since you left, I mean; not since I've visited." Clive brushes the stone with his thumb, tenderly, wiping away a rivulet of mud. The mud only spreads, streaking across the marble surface. He'd only made it worse. He lets his hand fall to his side.</p><p>The tombstone is well-polished, despite Clive's sorry attempt at cleaning it, and the lawn is spotless and well-tended. He wonders who's maintained it for all these years. Could it be Spring? No, it was more likely to be Shipley; he'd always had such an eye for what made a landscape beautiful. Clive wonders if he'll ever see either of them, or Cogg, ever again, whether they'd be glad to get a call from him, or if they'd rather he faded out of their lives permanently.</p><p>"I'm doing a little better now," he says, half to himself, and half to Constance. "I'm living with the professor now. He's been so good to me. Just like you always were."</p><p>She was always so kind to him. Even though he'd shut himself away from her, even though he never called her 'Mum.' (He just… couldn't.) She'd given him everything he'd ever needed or wanted.</p><p>Her mistake.</p><p>"You should never have called me your son," he says, forcing a chuckle. "I squandered your fortune. Everything you'd ever worked for, gone down the drain. All wasted on a ridiculous facsimile of London."</p><p>Clive vaguely wonders if he'd have gone ahead with his plan if Constance had lived. Her care for him had given him a desperately needed stability, and her death had sent him crashing down, spiralling into madness.</p><p>He'd likely have never dreamed up the idea of Future London without having met Constance, though. She'd made her fortune pioneering new technologies with her mechanical engineering expertise. Young Clive, who, in his old life, had been fascinated with zoology and psychology, had made a sharp turn into the hard sciences under Constance's eager tutelage. Clive recalls the long hours poring over textbooks with her, solving the physics puzzles that she'd come up with for him, dreaming up blueprints that would never be built, letting his imagination run wild.</p><p>Would she have been impressed by the fruits of his imagination? Or would she have shaken her head at the cogs and gears of Future London?</p><p>"It <em>looked</em> nice, anyway," sighs Clive, staring past the tombstone. "It was a beautiful place. I truly enjoyed designing it, and I would've liked you to see it, even if you hated me for why I built it."</p><p>In his heart, Clive knows that Constance wouldn't have hated him, even if he'd destroyed the entire earth. She'd always thought that he was such a good boy. And he'd tried so hard to be good, while she was alive, even though he'd been mad back then, too (he'd always been mad; he simply used to be better at hiding it).</p><p>He'd swallowed the screams and the tears that would threaten him whenever he saw a flame, and had blinked away the dizziness that enveloped him whenever a sudden loud noise startled him. He refused to lash out; not at Constance, not at anyone. He wanted to be a gentleman for Constance—a stoic gentleman, calm, placid, always smiling, always in control of his actions.</p><p>And yet, sometimes, the mask would slip.</p><p>"You loved me more than I deserved, Constance." Clive smiles halfheartedly. "Do you remember the time that I broke the model airship you made for me? It was on purpose, as much as you wanted to believe otherwise. I don't remember what you did that made me melt down so completely. What a little <em>brat</em> I was."</p><p>He wishes, for a moment, that time travel was truly an option for him, so that he could go back and shake the little prig by the shoulders, and shout into his red, blotchy, tear-stained face.</p><p>"You were kinder than I would've been," he says fondly. "You let me go to my room, and then, when I'd stopped crying, you followed me in, and you sat on the corner of my bed, and you told me that you understood how I felt, and, no matter what, you'd still… love me."</p><p>The wind gusts, cold and wet, and a stray raindrop (he hopes), trails down Clive's cheek. "And even then, I couldn't—wouldn't, say that I loved you. I thought that I was only allowed to love two people, fool that I was. I never told you. Not until it was too late."</p><p>He bends down further, resting his other knee on the ground, bowing his head until his eyes are level with the inscription of her name on the tombstone. "Can you… hear me?" he whispers, knowing that she can't. "I… wish that you could, so I could tell you…"</p><p>He stays there, his eyes closed, the rain soaking through his clothes, until he can't feel the cold anymore.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>I can't write anything about Clive that isn't depressing, it seems.</p><p>Thank you for reading!</p></blockquote></div></div>
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